A Heart's Crucible
Counting

As silent as typhoid glides through an aqueduct, Kashm led the Dev across the nothing. Blacker than chimney soot, they tumbled from the night sky.

Wherever Kashm’s eyes roamed, his alternate glance included the lunar eclipse. Coal dark presented the ideal cover for the blackest deed. He orientated the Dev in a huddle on the mid-western prairie. He hissed and swaggered as owls ceased to hoot and wolf packs quit their howls, slinking to dry gulches.

Kashm swung his net and loaded his dart pipe. The looming eclipse heightened the Dev’s strident need to hunt. As undisciplined as a revolutionary mob, they thirsted for blood. Instinct led as they ransacked a native plains encampment in lethal minutes before Kashm remembered Ahriman and the Peri.

He bellowed, “Chaos,” after feasting.

The green-eyed Dev surveyed tattered wigwams, exposed bones, scattered moccasins and crushed papooses.

The sly Dev reminded his fellow imps, “light and pins were their friends.”

After looping his net, he led the Peri chase. Fighting defined the Dev, not reading or arithmetic! Kashm embraced Ahriman’s promise of anointing his Dev when he conquered the earth. He foretold a partnership in gleeful sin once they captured the pesky sprites.

A simple task. A thousand Dev and a thousand Peri. One fricking fairy each. One to capture one full-stop.

Kashm observed collective noses in the air as the fiend troop sniffed through their flared nostrils propped on their haunches. Upwind, he inhaled a familiar scent—a whiff matching the matted fur ball from the caverns of Abandon. The smell guided a stealth flight under his leadership.

The Dev peered over the lip of the mound. Slight-winged sprites summed up as easy prey. The green-eyed imp led, itchy for party-pooping, as he organised the raiders to encircle the ridges. To spread nets and load darts. He checked for a fan of grey eyes, which hap-chance matched a propitious rising mist. His claws twitched.

He rubbed his palm; no Dev stench reached the celebrating Peri. Instead, the off-guard sprites danced around bonfires saturated with perfumed logs — a raft of sickening scents to the imps; jasmine, cider, honeysuckle and vanilla. He sneered as the Peri celebrated the promise of the night.

Kashm enjoyed the sprite’s upturned noses and nostrils pinched as the air changed. He revelled in the dense smells as he overheard a rapid, disjointed Peri babble.

“Phew, rotting sea turtle, yuck, vulture vomit, and oh ladies, flap your wings. Wow, an overripe personal wind release!”

The green-eyed Dev clicked his fingers. He sprung and lunged at a crimson-winged piece of skirt. As Kashm netted a Peri, his fellow predators wrapped sprites faster than an unexpected spring shower. Trussing his haul, he spotted floozies attempting to scoot.

The Dev, with scorn, echoed his master in Kaf, hissing, “The seer and an impossible task.”

Sharp darts rained into Peri skin. His mind rehashed Gasping Winds’ pernicious rundown of the effects. A stabbing punch and sweet blood stinging into a drowse, even as a staggering sprite scratched at the ground.

Kashm initiated a wild hissing devil dance as a sentimental gala transformed into welcome demonic horror. The Peri world became his, as razor claws shredded delicate fabrics.

The bonfires blazed, and their light illuminated a cruel scene. Trussed nubiles, their wings bound, their eyelids drooped. Ripped hats and lost shoes littered the earth. He back-slapped Dev troopers whose captives resembled pin cushions as they yanked out a surfeit of darts from blotched skin.

Kashm scratched his loins, leching over the despoiled costumes of the world — bedraggled and torn; kimonos, kaftans, and Bedouin thawbs.

“Who has caught one?” said Kashm.

“Don’t yell now.”

Silence enjoyed an ugly moment.

He signalled the Dev to roll the Peri as a bed mat across their shoulders. Next, he gestured to douse every flame. Capture and night blend into loyal friends. Kashm knew they required a deep-shadowed place to greet the dawn. Dark deeds adore cavernous locations. In a victory formation, his cohort circled the sky five times. After swirling their nets, the Dev headed to the Grand Canyon to hurl the Peri to their master.

The flinging came soon enough; time passed, shackled or gnashing tusks. Finally, the nano fissure occurred, and the imps lobbed the Peri en mass across the nothing to Mount Kaf. Their deed completed, the Dev careened free to terrorise the world. Kashm farted at the stupidity of the yellow, orange and plum-eyed twins because, as a collective, they catapulted themselves into the void alongside their prey.

∗ ∗ ∗

Ahriman’s savage ravish knew no limits as the first trussed Peri rolled across the chamber floor. He celebrated with a rude handstand on the arms of his throne.

Seated, he checked his ghouls. Unbalanced Soul, cracked thigh bone marrow as he settled into his allotted counting task. A red eye swayed between two giant ebony urns, one full, one empty. Knucklebones to his left, his job, transfer a bone with each appearing tethered Peri.

Dying Ember, Ahriman smirked, relished his role, to poke each hurled Peri with a burning finger. He festered a gruesome brand on their upper arms. Thirsty Sea, between swigs of blood-flavoured mead, completed his role. He unbound the netted Peri supported by Gasping Wind, whose privileges included pinning the Peri wings to the basalt walls. Ahriman leered as the whistling ghoul licked the sprite’s silky hair as a perk before locking each cage. Banished from proceedings was Crumbling Dust. The doofus lusted to shove his wicked prong inside every Peri’s throat.

The counting speed exceeded Ahriman’s expectations — coping with ghoul arithmetic. Nevertheless, he appreciated simple number crunching— a thousand Dev for a thousand Peri. One caught, one sent through the void to Mount Kaf. Foolproof!

He tapped with impatience in a rhythm joining Unbalanced Soul’s plopping of knuckles. Dying Ember sizzled flesh at a stinging pace. Thirsty Sea unwrapped nets mimicking a fisherman catching endless mermaids. But his facial sweat unmasked his fear — the equation, every Dev net filled with a Peri?

Phooey to counting. Ahriman yawned.

Conspiracy, though, required nipping in the bud. Gasping Wind hummed, ‘hurts so good,’ in a tasteless falsetto as he locked each cage. The prick eyed power beyond Abandon, a replica of himself. And he glanced too often towards the throne. Yet how to pinpoint the double-cross! Ahriman suspected betrayal in a facking unguarded moment.

He wished for an added set of eyes as Crumbling Dust edged towards a tethered Peri. A manic ghoul and a nuisance. Ahriman clanked his chains in a wave to dispatch the savage fiend to a side chamber.

The Dark Lord smacked his chops. Loathsome success loomed. He belittled a back crack as Unbalanced Soul reached deep into the urn, where a few knuckles rattled. Bored, he jibed at Thirsty Sea, counting the sparse, empty cages on stubby fingers.

Ahriman, though, perched puzzled and jerked back his head, stifling a laugh as the half tongue caught in the ghoul’s throat. The Peri stock take paused by spluttering and coughing.

Gasping Wind’s shrill whistle redirected his eyes.

Abandoned hath no fury equivalent to a thwarted Lord!

“You facking idiots!”

Gas bellowed from Ahriman’s bowels, and his chains thrashed. His horns turned neon green, never seen. He wished the three Dev twins squished underfoot at birth as the foolish yellow, orange, and plum-eyed Dev pairs rolled from the portal with their Peri prey. Simple math. Two plus one doesn’t add up to a thousand.

His peripheral vision embraced a mess. Unbalanced Soul teetered foot to foot. He plopped three knuckles to the right but tossed three more between his hands.

Dying Ember at least reacted to his foul cry. Instead of branding the Peri, he turned coloured eyes into festering wounds in a flash. The six blind Dev writhed, stunned, grasping at broken bones on the stone floor. He acknowledged Thirsty Sea caging the Peri.

Ahriman, in a spleen-splitting rage, though he lacked one, lashed out in rancour deeper than his ghastly sins. His chains whipped at the pathetic backs grovelling on the floor. He shredded wings with an acrid bite.

Beyond a tantrum, in the realm of a towering ire, he yelled, “Crumbling Dust.”

The malevolent ghoul needed no information, no charge, no kangaroo court or show trial. One by one, in a bastard and dastardly method, he ram-jammed his blackthorn cudgel. He impaled each Dev from way below their navels to their chops.

No more Peri churned through the nothing portal. Ahriman expected none as Unbalanced Soul tossed three knuckle bones from palm to palm. Dying Ember kept branding six dead Dev whilst Thirsty Sea swigged deep from his horn. Ahriman suspected because he expected summary evisceration. But, no, the blamed lay dead. Crumbling Dust lined entrails on the floor, seeing if twins were identical inside and out.

Only Gasping Wind eyeballed Ahriman. The word failure did not exist in their planning. The Dark Lord extended his ring towards the ghoul with a brain, and Gasping Wind’s wink showed a tacit understanding of his duty. Capture the three remaining Peri. The whispering ghoul scratched his hindquarters, aware a foul-up involved dire personal cost.

The universe prefers balance, nine hundred and ninety-seven Peri captured, three to go. Nine hundred and ninety-four Dev roamed the earth. Six bat-smashed corpses in Abandon wrecked the equation.

“Unbalanced Soul, meteorite now,” though Ahriman scratched his horns because evil prefers a skewing to the uneven.

With an instinctual habit, the Dark Lord hawked his yellowish snot, smearing six small pieces of meteorite, restoring the terrible balance.

Meaningless hours ticked to twilight, save one, a private conversation between the demon Lord and Unbalanced Soul.

“Three two one,” and spitting on and pointing his ring at Gasping Wind, Ahriman launched the one he most needed to watch.

Ambition overrode caution. The sly ghoul’s cunning best suited the capture of the three Peri aided by Kashm.

One, two, three, more chain clanks followed.

“Damn, Plotters! Damn the Peri!” as the Dark Lord scuttled Unbalanced Soul through the portal to tail Gasping Wind.